


The Shroud Eater

by Plenoptic



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alukah, Angry Sex, Biting, Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Human/Vampire Relationship, I'm stealing your tag noahfronsenburg and I'm sorry, Jewish Mythology, Leonardo knowing too much about corpses, M/M, Vampire Sex, Vampire!Volpe, Volpelli, loquacious lovers, someone told me I should add more tags so here we are, uhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:33:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plenoptic/pseuds/Plenoptic
Summary: “I can hear it,” Volpe breathes, and his hands tighten around Machiavelli’s wrists. “Your heartbeat. I can hear it from here. I can smell your blood, hear it moving in your veins.” He tilts his head, and his smile is a bitter, miserable thing. “How can you not be afraid of me, Niccolò?”“I am,” Machiavelli confesses in a whisper. “Just not for the reasons you think."
Relationships: Niccolò Machiavelli/La Volpe
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	The Shroud Eater

**Author's Note:**

> Born half because I was doing some interesting reading about Italian superstition and folklore and half because a gratuitous Volpelli vampire AU is just. So long overdue.

i.

It should have been an easy job—get in to the Palazzo Vecchio, fetch the damning documents that are jealously guarded in the office of the Ten of War during the day, get back out. It’s just bad luck that it goes wrong, that the guard shifts have changed in the last twelve hours, bad luck that they get caught in precisely the wrong place at precisely the right time.

Worse luck that Volpe is so busy trying to protect Machiavelli from discovery—because even masked, there is a slim chance he’ll be recognized if the guard is a daytime regular—that he is not careful enough of the blade the panicked guardsman is swinging.

Machiavelli is not quite sure how they make it out—only that he has to cut a few Florentine throats to get them free, that there is a great deal of shouting, and that the thief’s weight is desperately heavy around his shoulders as they stagger from the Palazzo Vecchio and stumble into their city’s darkened streets.

“Leave me,” Volpe pants. He says it so quietly that for a moment Machiavelli thinks he’s only imagined it, but then the thief seizes him by the coat and says it again, snarling. “Niccolò, leave me!”

“What?” Machiavelli snaps back, panting as he looks up and down the alley they’ve stumbled into, which is mercifully empty. He trembles with the exertion of holding Volpe upright. Shouts ring out in the distance. They have to move, but Volpe has dug his heels in and is trying to push Machiavelli off.

“You have to go!” The thief’s breathing is harsh, ragged, and he loses his balance and falls back against the wall, clasping a hand to the bloody wound in his thigh. Machiavelli reaches for him and Volpe knocks his hand away. “Go, Niccolò, _please_ —”

“What are you talking about?” Machiavelli demands. “I’m not _leaving_ you—”

“You _have to!_ ” He has never heard Volpe so urgent, so—dare he even think it?— _afraid_. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated, and though the night is warm, his hands shake like leaves in winter as he cups Machiavelli’s face between them. Volpe pulls him close and kisses him, a desperate thing, messy, knocking their teeth together in his haste and then shoving him away. “You have to get away before—”

There is a shout behind them, and a crossbow bolt strikes the wall a foot above Machiavelli’s head, showering them with broken bits of stone. With a snarl Machiavelli extends his hidden blade and whirls around, ducks nimbly out of the way of the knife the guard throws in a panic even as he tries to reset his crossbow. He is still fumbling with the strings when Machiavelli leaps upon him and sinks the hidden blade into his neck.

Machiavelli clambers back to his feet, breathless, and pulls his hood low over his eyes. The shouting is moving off into the distance—this guardsman must have gotten separated in the chase. He peers out into the street, which is empty save for a few stumbling drunks, and ducks back into the alley.

“We’ll cut back around the market district,” he says, thinking fast, “if we avoid the Piazza della Signoria we should be—”

He turns to address his companion, but Volpe is right behind him, merely a handspan away. Something is wrong—Machiavelli sees that instantly, but it doesn’t prepare him any better for the hand that Volpe puts around his throat. He can’t so much as utter a sound of surprise before the thief picks him up and throws him, like he weighs nothing, into the nearest wall. Machiavelli feels his head crack against the stone and hits the ground with a punched-out gasp, stars exploding in his vision, the ground rocking beneath his hands as he struggles to push himself upright.

“Volpe,” he mumbles, dizzied, disoriented, and that hand is around his jaw, forcing his head up. He tries to push the thief off, but even if he weren’t so badly dazed, he’d be powerless against the hand that seizes his wrist and pins him to the cobblestones, squeezes so hard he feels the bones creak and his pained gasp is strangled in his throat. “ _Gilberto—_ ”

Volpe leans down over him, and Machiavelli freezes, actually feels his heart stutter. The older man’s eyes are locked on him without seeing him, and his pupils are so contracted they are barely visible, little dark pinpricks on a field of violet. Volpe’s mouth hangs open, panting, tongue sweeping across his lips, and when he bares his teeth, Machiavelli actually shudders as panic grips him—extending over Volpe’s canines are a set of _fangs_ , an inch long and wicked sharp, sharper than daggers.

How hard did he hit his head, that his addled mind is conjuring such visions? He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, but Volpe is still a snarling monster crouched on his chest, and the hands that normally touch him with love are tight and cruel around his wrist and throat.

“Gilberto,” he says, almost pleading, as the thief forces his head up and ducks down to tear open the neck of Machiavelli’s doublet with those teeth, exposing his skin. “Gilberto, please—”

Volpe’s tongue sweeps hot and wet along the column of his throat. For a moment it’s like the world has stopped turning, and Machiavelli holds his breath, knows what is about to happen with the same animal instinct that freezes a hare in a fox’s jaws.

Volpe’s teeth sink into him. The pain is exquisite, unearthly, and Machiavelli shouts, struggles, but he might as well be a fly struggling in a spider’s web for how tightly Volpe holds him down. And his lover has held him down before, when they are playful in bed, but it has never been anything like _this_ —the bones of his wrist grind together under Volpe’s palm, and he can feel his pulse thudding beneath the thumb and forefinger Volpe has pressed into the hinge of his jaw.

A strange sensation floods through him, starting in his throat, washing over him—a heaviness that settles in his limbs, and he can’t fight back anymore, goes limp beneath Volpe’s weight and can’t summon the strength to so much as clench a fist as the thief bites into him again. His heart is racing, so fast and so hard that he fears it will burst in his chest, and all along his skin is heat, terrible, cloying heat as his veins open wide and the blood rushes through him.

Those fangs are daggers cutting into him, pulling him open. Volpe’s breath is heavy and hot against his skin, the thief’s tongue dipping into the wound, lapping at the spilling blood, and Volpe releases a low moan, something animal and broken and deeply satisfied. There is a _gulping_ sound, too awful to ruminate on.

The pain, at least, feels very far away now. Machiavelli blinks slowly up at the night sky, listening to his own breath rattling through him. He wonders what has actually happened to him—because surely _this_ is a hallucination, because there is no version of this world or any other where Gilberto would hurt him.

The thief lifts his head, panting, blood smeared across his mouth and cheeks. Machiavelli stares up at him, head pounding, heart aching, admires the way Volpe’s hair hangs in his face as the older man looks down at him. Volpe blinks several times, his brow furrowing, and his pupils enlarge. He stares down at Machiavelli like he’s never seen him before, eyes flickering across his face—and then Volpe touches his own mouth and jolts like he’s been shocked.

“No,” he says, and again, lower and broken, moaning almost, “no, no, no, oh no, Niccolò, _Niccolò_ ”—bends to gather Machiavelli in his arms, shuddering, cradling him like a broken doll and stroking a hand over his hair. “Oh God, no, beloved, _no_ —”

Machiavelli tries to speak and can’t; he feels heavy, cold. Volpe eases him back down onto the cobbles, brushes fingertips over his nose and mouth, feeling for his ragged breath, and then presses both hands to the grisly wound he’s opened in Machiavelli’s throat.

“Look at me,” the thief says, almost sobbing, and his eyes are wide and glistening as Machiavelli looks up at him. “Niccolò, _please_ —” His fingers tremble as he caresses Machiavelli’s cheek, bites down on an anguished noise when a gout of blood pours forth between his fingers and he clamps both hands back down around the wound. He continues mumbling in languages Machiavelli doesn’t know, doesn’t even recognize. Tears drip down the thief’s nose, land on Machiavelli’s cheeks, his mouth.

The stars are very bright and very large overhead, and burning larger and brighter as he stares up at them. And then they are falling, great white orbs sinking through the night sky, bathing Florence in searing alabaster.

* * *

The world is still white and gleaming when he opens his eyes next, and several seconds pass before he realizes it’s sunlight, pouring in through the window and falling in his face. He winces and lifts a hand, shielding his eyes. He tries to rock his head, to avert his face, but the merest twinge of his neck muscles make everything hurt so fiercely he can barely breathe through the bolts of agony in his skull. Panting, he squints up at his arm, finds the skin around his wrist mottled with dark bruises. He is still staring when the door opens and someone screams, the sound like nails in his aching temples, and his sister drops the tray she came in carrying and throws herself onto the bed.

His mouth and throat are so dry he can’t even protest as she hugs him, but her weight around his shoulders and neck is excruciating. He finally puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes, and she releases him, apologies tumbling out of her mouth as he collapses groaning back against the bed. She scurries from the room and returns a moment later with a new carafe of water.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” she’s still saying, even as she pours him a cup and helps him sit up to drink. He downs it in seconds and motions for another, which she provides. “You’ve been asleep for _days_ , I was starting to think you’d never—”

“Gilberto,” he says, rasping, the second his throat is wet enough to permit speech, “where’s Gilberto?”

Margherita blinks. “Who?”

“Didn’t he bring me—” He takes a quick look around the room, and is surprised to find it’s his. “I’m home?”

“Of course you’re home.” Margherita takes his hand, and he looks down at her in mounting confusion. “Niccolò—what’s the last thing you remember?”

He casts his mind around. The details are fuzzy, half-moving shapes in the dark. He winces and presses his hand to his brow. “The alley,” he says at length, struggling to remember. Oh, he remembers the _nightmare_ he had, Volpe holding him down and tearing his throat open like an animal, drinking his _blood_ — “We were running. The job at the Palazzo Vecchio went bad.”

Margherita frowns. “What job?”

“Brotherhood business,” he mutters, rubbing his eyes. “La Volpe and I—where _is_ he?” Volpe was hurt, he remembers that much—and badly, his whole left thigh torn open, blood spilling all over the cobblestones as Machiavelli helped him from the Palazzo and into the city’s darkened streets, the wounded guards’ screams for help chasing them out.

“A doctor from the market district had you in his clinic,” Margherita says, watching him with wide, anxious eyes, and he stares at her. “He said someone left you in bad shape practically on his doorstep. He says it’s a miracle you survived.”

Machiavelli’s heart jumps into his throat. “ _What_ did I survive, exactly?”

Margherita hesitates. She reaches for the bedside table and hands him a small mirror. He peers down at his reflection, perplexed—and sees a swath of bandages around his neck. He sits stock-still for a moment, stunned, and then flings aside the blankets and scrambles down from the bed. Margherita tries to stop him and he ignores her, stumbling across the room and into the adjoining washroom. He plants his hands on the wall above the larger mirror within and stares at his own frazzled reflection, at the bandages around his throat. He runs his fingers along them until he finds the margin where they are sewn together and tears at it, shoves Margherita off when she seizes his hands to try and stop him, and after a moment’s frantic scrabbling the bandages uncoil and fall loose at the base of his neck.

Machiavelli stares for a moment at his own wide-eyed reflected self, at the dark mess of stitches and clotted blood and bruises that the left side of his neck has become—and then he slips sideways in a dead faint, and Margherita’s shouting for help is the last thing he hears before the world around him is as dark and heavy as a funeral shroud.

* * *

For a week, Ezio manages to give him the slip, but Machiavelli finally corners him in Leonardo’s study, where the older assassin is wont to retreat when he is in his native city attending business. Ezio looks sullen and irritated at being caught, but he cannot possibly be more irritated than Machiavelli, whom he has been diligently avoiding.

“Because I have nothing to tell you,” he says, before Machiavelli can go off on him. “All I know is that the job went bad, and I only know that much because you told Margherita as much before you lost consciousness again. I haven’t seen la Volpe.” He pauses, then adds, sounding pained, “No one has.”

Machiavelli’s hands tighten into fists on Leonardo’s table. “He can’t just _vanish_.”

“He _is_ la Volpe,” Ezio points out, arching a brow. He leans forward and places a hand on Machiavelli’s arm. “Tell me what happened.”

“We got caught,” Machiavelli says. He lowers his head into his hands, wincing. Margherita only managed to keep him in bed a week before he insisted on going after Ezio, and his wounds still ache, his head especially. Concussed, the doctor had informed him, which means no working, no reading, no doing much of anything—but what _should_ he do, sit at home with his thumb up his ass while Volpe roams the streets, wounded, alone?

“Were you seen?”

“Yes, but not recognized—I wore a mask.”

Ezio breathes a long, low sigh and slumps back in his chair. “ _Bene_. It was too risky, Niccolò. If you’d been found out, and we’d lost you as chancellor—”

“I know,” Machiavelli says, very quiet. “I know. I can’t keep playing both sides.” He pauses, and then sighs, resigned. “This will be the last time. I’ll have to leave the sneaking around to you.” It’s a waste, he thinks—he’s a good assassin, and they need all the good blades they can get. But he is a better politician. He understands that now. “I still have to find la Volpe.”

Ezio hesitates. “Is it possible he—"

“He’s not dead,” Machiavelli interrupts, perhaps too sharply, but he doesn’t care. He presses his hand to the side of his throat, unconsciously, and Ezio’s eyes linger on the bandages there—the wound is too grisly yet, and Machiavelli didn’t want to upset people at the sight of it.

“What happened?” Ezio asks, his voice very soft, and the question is different now.

For a frozen moment, Machiavelli considers telling him—because it’s _madness_ , what he remembers, and he can’t make any sense of it. And if Volpe had just attacked him and then disappeared into the night, then perhaps he would tell Ezio—but there was _after_ , Volpe holding him, sobbing as he tried to staunch the wound. He’d been out of his head. Machiavelli is sure of that. And if Volpe didn’t _mean_ to hurt him, then all is not lost.

“I hit my head,” he says instead. “I don’t remember.” Not the whole truth, but not precisely a lie. He _doesn’t_ remember much of that night, and the… _mauling_ …still has the fuzzy, faded edges of a nightmare in his head. He still holds onto hope that it was a nightmare, somehow, that perhaps the wound on his throat is from a stray dog that thought him a tempting snack when he lost consciousness in the alley. (Preposterous, of course—dogs don’t bite _like that_ , but Machiavelli is nothing if not stubborn.)

Ezio sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Alright. How can I help?”

“Don’t,” Machiavelli says, too quickly, and Ezio looks suspicious. Machiavelli shakes his head. “Let me take care of it. If you find anything out, do let me know, but—let me worry about la Volpe.”

“You always do, it seems,” Ezio says, because despite his occasional foolishness he really is too shrewd for his own good, and certainly for Machiavelli’s. But he nods. “If you need help, tell me.”

“ _Grazie_ ,” Machiavelli murmurs, relieved, and Ezio claps a hand to his shoulder—the uninjured side—before he gets up to leave.

* * *

Machiavelli may be la Volpe’s ally, but he is also the chancellor, and Volpe’s thieves are more likely to throw themselves headlong into the Arno than trust a government official (one does, in fact, escape Machiavelli by diving off the side of the Ponte Vecchio), and even when he does manage to track them down and badger them about their leader’s whereabouts, they only stare at him with sullen, tight-lipped silence. He gives up on them quickly—every day that slips by is a day Volpe may be moving further from Florence, or convalescing from his terrible injury alone, or… Machiavelli’s imagination never seems to run out of awful possible fates that might have met the man he loves. So he focuses on dogging every lead he can find, which is not many.

A week after he spoke to Ezio, he is still empty-handed. He isn’t even holding on to hope that Volpe has stayed in Florence—it would be very much like him to run, to shelter for a few months or even a few years in another city, perhaps hoping that Machiavelli would forget about him eventually.

But Machiavelli won’t, stubborn person that he is, and Volpe must know that. So either he’s stayed in Florence to ride out the storm he must know is coming, or he’s quit the city for good, heading, perhaps, for some distant country where even Machiavelli would struggle to track him down.

 _Good luck, cazzo_ , Machiavelli thinks scathingly, as he rests from his long hunt on a shaded bench near the Ponte Vecchio. He’s poised to acquire ambassadorship to Germany and Spain, which means there’ll be nowhere in Europe Volpe can go that Machiavelli won’t be able to follow. Setting up a good network of informants only takes a few months if one knows what they’re doing, and men like Volpe attract rumors and whispers like a brothel attracts lice.

And he will, after all—he will chase Volpe across the continent, if that’s what it takes. Machiavelli sighs, closes his eyes. He isn’t even angry, but he wishes he were. Anger would be easier to manage than the gnawing, desperate fear coiled in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t think he and Volpe have ever been two weeks apart—two years ago they fell into step beside one another and they’ve been that way since.

Machiavelli swallows. The wound on his throat aches.

ii.

All told, it is six months before he sees la Volpe again, and it would have been longer had Volpe’s own foolish heart not gotten the better of him.

It is Machiavelli’s habit at that point to sleep in the Palazzo Vecchio. He often works past curfew, and he likes to be up and in his rhythm before the notaries arrive. They’re as likely as not to take the wrong documents to the wrong people if he doesn’t supervise. And in any case, Florence’s political situation continues to bubble and broil. Machiavelli is not overly fond of most of the members of the Signoria, who live in the Palazzo during their two month tenures, but neither does he want to see them killed in their beds, so he also takes to prowling the halls at night while the guard changes over. Would-be assassins—those not of his order, anyway—will have to go through him if they want to cut throats on his turf.

He is on one such late-night prowl when he hears rustling from the office of the chancellor ( _his_ office—the fucking _gall_ ), and he finds the door unguarded, standing ajar. Antonio dragged the first chancellor, Marcello, out of the office hours prior for a late-night drink, and had promised Machiavelli that he’d take Marcello home after. Machiavelli draws his favored cinquedea from his waistband and inches toward the door.

The lock has been picked expertly. There are very few thieves in Florence with hands so deft. He holds his breath, hardly daring to hope, and nudges the door open with a foot just enough that he can slip inside the office. It hasn’t been tossed; the intruder, whoever they are, knows exactly what they’re looking for. The office itself is empty, but at the end of the room a second door has been left open a crack, admitting flickering light from within his personal study. He grinds his teeth for a moment and then crosses the room on his toes.

He creeps up on the door and presses his back to the wall beside it, readjusting his grip on his cinquedea as he strains his ears to catch the whisper of movement within—the swish of a cloak, the opening and closing of a drawer. There is no window in his study; whoever is inside will have to come back out through this door. He turns his blade over in his sweating palm and closes his eyes, counts his heartbeats as he listens for the sound of approaching footsteps.

His quarry is so light-footed that he nearly misses his mark, and it’s only the soft squeak of the door that signals Machiavelli to leap onto the intruder’s back. There’s a shout, and despite his best efforts he can’t take the other man to the floor, and they struggle for a moment in the dark, trying to find leverage. The intruder finds it first, seizes Machiavelli’s arm around his neck and throws the chancellor over his shoulder. Machiavelli hits the floor with a grunt, dazed for a breath, but manages to catch his assailant’s ankle as the thief leaps over him in a desperate bid for the window. The other man goes down with an _oomph_ , and Machiavelli scrambles to pin him, catches his wrists before the thief can go for his dagger and pins them to the floor over the thief’s head—

Which is positioned just so beneath the window, in a patch of moonlight spilling bright and gleaming across the floor, and when his eyes meet Volpe’s, Machiavelli’s breath stops. The thief freezes, stops his struggling for a moment, and they stare at one another in something like wonder—and then Volpe jerks a knee up, hits Machiavelli in his lower ribs, and the chancellor collapses, winded, as the thief pushes him off and makes another lunge for the window.

 _“Gilberto_ —” He’s too late already—Volpe’s cape whips through the window and vanishes. Swearing, Machiavelli gets to his feet and rushes to the sill, leaning over the edge and squinting down into the gloom. He sees nothing and cranes his head toward the Palazzo’s tower, catches sight of a shape moving in the dark, heading upward. He scrambles out without thinking, finding handholds by instinct, lets his training take over as he heaves his weight through the window and onto the exterior wall of the Palazzo Vecchio.

It’s a sick, stomach-churning climb, and he is all too aware of the piazza below, where he’s sure he’d make a rather impressive stain if he so much as misses a handhold, and the higher he gets, the less he can see by the light of the flickering torches below. He’s fortunate, really, that his training as an assassin involved so much damn climbing, and that his father’s frequent business in this part of the city and his insistence on his son’s company left a young Machiavelli with not much better to do than scale up and down the seat of Florentine government when the guards weren’t looking. It’s perhaps the only building in the entire city that he can scale as fast as la Volpe, and when he finally reaches the roof and vaults over the edge, the thief is only a few paces ahead of him.

Machiavelli snarls, lunges forward in a flat-footed sprint, and three heartbeats later he collides with Volpe’s back and takes him down, and this time he’s smart enough to pin the thief facedown and hold his wrists behind his back.

“Enough!” he snarls in Volpe’s ear, digging his knee into the older man’s lower back. “ _Basta_ , Gilberto—haven’t you run long enough?!”

“Get off,” Volpe pants, struggling mightily, “get off, get _off_ —”

Machiavelli growls and pulls back the thief’s hood to tangle a hand in Volpe’s hair, pin his head to the cold cobbles of the roof. Volpe gets an arm free and swings an elbow backward into Machiavelli’s side, but the assassin holds him fast.

“God dammit, Gilberto _, you owe me_!” he shouts. “Six months I’ve been searching for you, and for six months you’ve hidden like a fucking _coward_!”

Volpe freezes beneath him, his shoulders heaving with exertion, and after a strangled moment he bites out, “I was trying to _protect_ you, you fool!”

“From what?!”

“From me!”

Machiavelli snarls and flips him over, and Volpe glares up at him, but there is unmistakable heat in his gaze as they look at one another—and oh, God, six months without this man’s touch has ached like sixty _years_. Machiavelli can’t stop himself, can do nothing but lean down and kiss him, kiss him hard enough that one or the other’s lip catches between their teeth and he tastes blood in his mouth. Volpe pulls against Machiavelli’s grip on his wrists, shuddering, even as he moans into the next kiss.

“Niccolò,” he gasps, wrenching his mouth away—it’s his lip that’s bleeding, and Machiavelli leans down to swipe his tongue along the wound, groaning as Volpe gives in and kisses him again, and again, until they are lost in one another’s mouths and he’s released the thief’s wrists to grip his waist, and Volpe’s fingers are tight in his hair.

Before, it was nearly always Machiavelli who gave himself to the thief, who let Volpe tie him up in bed and fuck him as he pleased. But that was _before_ Volpe turned into a beast and tore his throat open, and his anger at that and at the thief’s long absence has Machiavelli flipping Volpe back onto his front and shoving his fingers into the thief’s mouth. Volpe needs no command—he’s already sucking, coating Machiavelli’s fingers liberally in spit and blood even as he arches his ass up and opens his thighs. Machiavelli fumbles his own trousers open to release his cock, presses his length into the thief’s ass, which is bare above the margin of his hose. Volpe never could be bothered with smallclothes.

He can’t stand it—it’s been six long months and he can’t wait another moment. Machiavelli pulls his fingers free of the thief’s greedy mouth and uses them to slick Volpe’s hole, pushes inside a few times with just his fingertips, just to remember the heat of his body. Volpe keens, a high, broken sound that doesn’t suit him, panting, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the stone roof as Machiavelli thrusts into him without further preamble. The drag of his cock on the thief’s insides is _just_ on the side of too dry, but Machiavelli withdraws and pushes into him again, groans as Volpe clenches around him. He catches the thief’s wandering hands and pins his wrists to his lower back, holds him down tight against the roof.

“Harder,” Volpe snarls, and Machiavelli obliges him, sets a hard pace, almost brutal, that has Volpe crying out with helpless abandon, trying and failing to rock his hips to meet his lover’s thrusts.

“Be still—”

“Can’t,” Volpe says, moaning, his mouth falling open against the stone beneath his cheek, “Niccolò, please—”

Machiavelli slips a hand beneath him, pants as he gropes the straining front of Volpe’s hose, and the thief’s hips buck against his palm. “I’ve missed you,” he says, growls it against Volpe’s nape, then tangles his fingers in his lover’s dark hair and forces his head up so he can speak in Volpe’s ear instead. “I thought you loved me.”

“I do,” Volpe says, almost in a sob, shuddering in Machiavelli’s hands. “I swear, I do.”

Machiavelli releases his cock and bites down on his own thumb, hard, until blood wells up around his nailbed. He reaches for Volpe’s face, forces his thumb into the thief’s mouth and drags it along Volpe’s teeth, beneath his upper lip, and the thief struggles for a moment—and Machiavelli watches in breathless wonder as those fangs extend from above the older man’s canines and Volpe’s pupils dilate.

This time, though, Volpe remains possessed of his senses, only continues to pant open-mouthed as Machiavelli runs a thumb along the length of one of the fangs, lets himself be cut on the impossibly sharp edge. He is dimly aware that he is looking at something that shouldn’t exist, for which there is no accounting in the natural world, something that escapes rational explanation—but it is still Gilberto, after all, Gilberto looking at him with that hungry, aching expression, Gilberto licking at his bloodied thumb and moaning, as beautiful as he is dangerous, and Machiavelli _wants_ him.

Machiavelli puts his bleeding hand back around Volpe’s cock and strokes him, takes special care to run his thumb around the weeping head with every upward caress of his fist, and in mere moments Volpe comes with a broken cry and a wet splatter against the stone, his ass clenching like a vice around Machiavelli’s length. Machiavelli fucks him through it, groaning—thinks for a frozen, terrifying moment about what it would be like to have Volpe’s mouth right now, to spend himself on those fangs—and he comes with a choked gasp, spills inside the man he loves while Volpe shudders and whimpers beneath him.

They stay tangled together in the aftermath, Machiavelli pressing himself tight to Volpe’s back, holding him, listening to Volpe pant to steady his breathing. There is a soft _snick_ sound as those fangs retract, and new cuts on Volpe’s mouth where he’s nicked himself on his own teeth. Machiavelli slides his cock free and straightens their clothes a little reluctantly, presses kisses to Volpe’s shoulder before getting shakily to his feet.

“Come,” he says, and turns, heading for the edge of the roof. He doesn’t need to look back to know that Volpe is following.

* * *

In his personal quarters, he makes Volpe sit on the bed and open his mouth again. The thief does, glowering as Machiavelli sweeps his bloodied thumb again along his lover’s incisors and watches with fascination as those fangs extend. He pushes Volpe’s lip up, examines the hollow in his gums where the things must retreat when they aren’t stimulated.

“What,” he says, weakly, and doesn’t know how to finish.

Volpe flicks an eyebrow up. “What am I?”

“What _are they_?”

“Fangs, Niccolò,” Volpe says, snorting, and Machiavelli shakes his head.

“No, I mean—” But he doesn’t know _what_ he means, doesn’t know what questions to ask, where to even begin. He sits back and takes a slow breath, tries to gather himself.

He is still summoning a question when Volpe touches him, places very gentle fingertips against the side of his throat, tracing his scars. For a moment, the look that flashes across the thief’s face is so anguished, so stricken, that Machiavelli’s heart surges in his chest. “I hurt you,” the thief murmurs, brokenly.

“Yes,” Machiavelli answers, simply, for want of anything better to say. “But you didn’t let me die.”

Volpe chuckles, a low, mirthless thing, and presses his hand to his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment. When he removes his palm, his fangs have retracted again. He looks, to Machiavelli’s eye, extraordinarily tired. “How very chivalrous of me, not letting you bleed to death in an alley like a slain animal.”

“You didn’t mean to—did you?”

“No,” Volpe says, and touches his hand. “No. Of course I didn’t mean to. You’ll recall I asked you to leave me there—begged you.” Machiavelli nods, and Volpe continues. “I was wounded—lost too much blood. It’s the only time I lose control.”

Machiavelli reaches for him, cradles his face, and Volpe’s eyes soften as they look at one another. “What is it like?”

“I couldn’t even tell you. When it happens, ‘I’—rather, my sense of self—takes a short leave of absence. My body does what it will.”

“Like instinct.”

Volpe winces. “If ‘instinct’ is a word befitting something so terrible. I don’t know, Niccolò. All I can remember after is—is the smell of it. The blood. And the hunger.” He pauses. “The hunger is…something not of this earth.”

Machiavelli touches his own scars, swallows. “I believe you.”

“I’m sorry,” Volpe breathes, but Machiavelli shakes his head before the words are even out of his lover’s mouth, draws him close for a kiss that lingers.

“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want to understand.”

“Keep asking, then.”

Machiavelli considers as he strokes Volpe’s mouth, entices his fangs to extend again. “Is it only when you’re wounded?”

“That I lose control? Yes. But the hunger grows if I don’t satiate it.”

Machiavelli draws a breath. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“It means I have to feed,” Volpe says, and smiles bitterly when Machiavelli shivers. “Usually, once a month suffices. Occasionally I get—peckish.”

“I’ve seen you eat,” Machiavelli says, a little weakly. “Food, I mean.” In fact he’s never met another man with Gilberto’s appetite, and courting the thief had become a much easier task when he realized that the quickest way to Volpe’s heart was through his stomach.

“I require the same sustenance as any other man. I suspect food tastes the same to me as it does for you, if not a little better—I do have quite the exceptional sense of smell, you see.”

That holds true—how many times has Volpe led them to a stand with fresh pastry as if by some strange magnetism? Machiavelli ruminates on that as he counts the seconds before the fangs retract again—half a minute seems to do it if they go without stimulus. “When you bit me, I felt—strange. Very heavy, but my heart was racing.”

“Ah.” Volpe winces as he rubs his mouth. “I don’t have any proof, of course, but I think there’s some sort of—venom. Muscle relaxant, vasodilator. You know.”

Machiavelli raises his brows. “Like a snake.”

“Something like that. Again—I don’t know for certain. But they always…go limp.”

Machiavelli looks at him for a protracted moment, trying to find a way to word his question without wounding Volpe further. The thief smiles at him.

“You want to know who I feed on, usually.”

Machiavelli blows out a breath and scrubs a hand across his brow. “You’ll think me foolish, but I couldn’t think of a way to ask that didn’t seem—rude?”

“You are not navigating some foreign social custom here, Niccolò,” Volpe says wryly, and his grin is soft, fond. “Be as rude as possible. I won’t be bothered. I welcome it, even—this is the first time I’ve ever spoken of this candidly.”

“No one before now has found out?”

Volpe touches him, trails a hand down Machiavelli’s arm. “No one I cared for. To answer your unasked question—I usually feed on the brotherhood’s marks.”

“ _Jesu Christo_ , don’t tell me this is why you joined up.”

“It’s not unrelated,” Volpe replies, and Machiavelli heaves a sigh. “Barring that, I take a jaunt through the countryside at night and am usually accosted by a brigand or two.”

Machiavelli frowns, sitting up suddenly. “Hang on. I’d killed a guard in that alley literally moments before you jumped on me. Why didn’t you satiate yourself on him?”

Volpe shrugs. “They have to be alive—the heart has to beat, at least.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. Popping into the morgue for a snack would be a hell of a lot easier than—” He stops at the look on Machiavelli’s face, wincing. “Sorry. Joking aside, I know very little about my…condition.”

“Have you—” Machiavelli pauses, turns it over in his head a moment. “Have you met anyone else who…?”

“One,” Volpe says softly. “That Templar, il Lupo. I don’t know whether he, like me, was born like this, or whether those Templar masters of his turned him somehow. I spent two of the last six months hunting him through Tuscania—to no avail, unfortunately, but he leaves quite the trail of bodies.”

“You were hunting Lupo? Why?—why _now_ , I mean?”

Volpe’s eyes slide away from his. “I wanted to see if I could kill him.”

“Yes, I surmised that much, if you were hunting him, what I’m asking is—” Machiavelli stops, and his eyes widen. “Gilberto, you—”

“I hurt you,” Volpe snaps, and he pulls away from the hand Machiavelli tries to put on his arm. “I almost _killed_ you. Of course I wanted to die. But I couldn’t very well leave with Lupo still running around—and in any case, taking my own life proved—challenging.”

Machiavelli stares at him, trying to process those words—but the reality that Volpe had spent any amount of time trying to take his own life, that he had actually _attempted_ it, is too painful to dwell upon. Finally he reaches for the thief again, ignores Volpe trying to push him off, and puts his arms around his lover’s shoulders, holding him close.

“You’re not alone, Gilberto,” he murmurs, and Volpe tenses in his arms. Machiavelli squeezes him tighter. “I understand why you felt you had to run. But don’t do it again.” He closes his eyes, focuses on the warmth of Volpe’s body against his, steady, alive. “You hurt me when you—fed—on me. But you hurt me worse with your leaving.”

A pause—and then Volpe’s arms go around him, pull him in tight to the thief’s chest, and Volpe’s face presses into his shoulder. They hold one another for a long time, almost until dawn breaks, like they will each shake to pieces if they let go.

* * *

They don’t sleep that night, engrossed in one another, relearning one another with desperate hands and fervent mouths. Machiavelli presses Volpe into the bed and touches every inch of him, traces scars that weren’t there before—takes him slowly and gently, well-slicked, while he whispers every aching, loving word that has been building inside him for the last half year into Volpe’s ear.

“What were you doing in my office?” he asks, during a lull, as he traces his fingertips up and down the length of Volpe’s cock and watches the thief’s squirming reactions, smiles at the way his breath catches.

“I was leaving,” Volpe admits, licking his lips as he tries to take himself in hand, but Machiavelli bats him away. “I wanted a token. Something to remember you by.”

“And? What did you select?”

Volpe is quiet for a moment. When he looks again at Machiavelli his eyes are fearful, wounded. “You were writing me letters? This whole time?”

Machiavelli’s heart lurches, and something in his expression makes Volpe lean in and kiss him, over and over, and the thief makes a soft, desperate sound against his mouth.

“Thank you,” he whispers, fervent, and Machiavelli blinks up at him, surprised. Volpe smiles and rolls them over, cradles Machiavelli’s legs around his waist and reintegrates them with a gentle roll of his hips that has Machiavelli gasping and clinging to him. Volpe pants as he leans down to press their foreheads together, smothers his lover’s moans between kisses. “Thank you,” he says again, breathes it into the space between their mouths, low and reverent. “Niccolò.”

* * *

“I don’t want you to see this,” Volpe says, for the hundredth time, and Machiavelli sighs.

“I need to understand.”

“You already have more close-up experience than most men survive to speak of,” Volpe grumbles, but he falls silent under his lover’s withering look and draws up his hood with a huff.

Their mark is easy—a city guardsman who has been accepting bribes to turn his eyes from heinous crimes, and who beats his wife to boot. Machiavelli, who made his bones as an assassin by cutting the throat of his eldest sister’s abusing husband, doesn’t think there is a better candidate to be eaten alive.

He and Volpe cross the city by rooftop and find their mark stationed near the Basilica di San Lorenzo, as the sun is falling fast toward the horizon, bathing the city in hues of red and ochre. Machiavelli has seen Volpe hunt before, but never precisely like _this_ , with this intent, and his lithe form creeping along the rooftops is more feline than his namesake.

The guard has his back to them, humming tunelessly, and as they approach he takes his cock out and pisses over the side of the building. Volpe presses low to the rooftop, and Machiavelli hears it—the almost imperceptibly soft sound of his fangs extending. The thief sits coiled for a moment, and for all the world he really does resemble a snake preparing to strike—and then he crosses the remaining distance in two near-silent bounds and seizes the guard from behind, clapping a hand over his mouth and nose to silence his shout. Volpe wrenches the man’s head to the side as he pulls him back from the edge of the roof, twisting them around, and so Machiavelli has a clear view when the man he loves opens his mouth and sinks his teeth into the side of his victim’s throat.

There is a moment more of struggling—and then the guard goes limp, his eyes wide and bulging as he hangs like a doll in Volpe’s grasp. The thief bites in again and jerks his head, and those fangs tear through skin and sinew, opening a gaping wound that Volpe covers with his mouth. The expression on his face is transcendent, somehow, as he presses his tongue into the wound with a low, crooning noise that makes every hair on Machiavelli’s body stand on end.

He drinks fast, ravenously, and the very moment the light leaves the man’s eyes, Volpe lets him drop to the rooftop and stands over him, panting, blood smeared across his nose and mouth and fangs. He swipes at them with his tongue as he turns to look at Machiavelli, who sits frozen several feet away, staring in wide-eyed wonder.

“Well?” the thief says, bitterly, as he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Everything you dreamed?”

It was repulsive, in truth. Terrifying. Awful. But fascinating, too, and—Machiavelli thinks he’ll go to hell for even thinking it—erotic. Volpe’s fangs are gleaming alabaster in the fading sunlight, and Machiavelli’s breath catches as he looks at them, thinks for an electrifying moment about them grazing his skin.

What turns him from such thoughts is the expression on Volpe’s face—dark and brooding, angry as he looks down at the body of the man he has slain. He bends down, unsheathing his dagger, and hacks several gory lacerations into the guard’s throat, more or less masking the jagged edges of the bite wounds. Then he presses the guard’s eyes closed, murmurs the words, and gets to his feet, turning to Machiavelli with a sigh.

“Let’s go.”

They return to Volpe’s den, speaking little on the way—Machiavelli’s head is so full of whirling thoughts he could not pick one out to give it voice. In Volpe’s room, he lets his lover press him into the bed, accepts the heady, iron-tinted kisses Volpe lavishes upon his mouth, shivers when Volpe pauses to kiss and nuzzle the scars on his throat.

“Can you feed on a person without killing them?”

Volpe lifts his head, quirks a brow. “Yes. I’d have to do it more often, but yes. I told you—if I’m unhurt, I’m in control.”

Machiavelli hesitates before he slips his hands into his lover’s hair, caresses his cheeks. “You don’t like doing it,” he says, carefully, and is unsurprised by the flinty, guarded look that gets him. “I saw you, Gilberto—how you looked after.”

Volpe looks at him a while, his expression stony, and then it crumbles. He sighs and lowers his head, presses his mouth to Machiavelli’s bare shoulder. “Of course I don’t like it.”

“Is it so different from using a dagger?”

“Daggers are quick—almost instant, if you’re skilled, and I am,” Volpe says, his voice heavy, bitter. “You saw it just now. Two minutes that man took to die, and the whole time he was so—so afraid.”

Like his poor wife, Machiavelli thinks, but doesn’t say it. He may think the death well deserved, but death-dealing is hard no matter the method. It chips away at all of them, piece by piece, and Machiavelli has not missed it over the last half year he has spent occupied with governance. He cannot imagine how burdensome it would be, to have to kill for his very survival. Moreover, la Volpe may have it in him to be cruel when circumstances call for cruelty, but his Gilberto is a gentle soul.

“ _Caro_ ,” he says, pauses, takes a breath. “Don’t reject outright what I am about to suggest.”

Volpe lifts his head, frowning. Machiavelli needs several more moments to collect himself, trying to find a way to say it right, to say it in a way that will be persuasive—but this is not a political maneuver, what he is about to recommend, and there is no pretty word in the world that will better compel Volpe to take it under advisement.

“If you fed on me,” he begins, and Volpe explodes from the bed, his face a rictus of cold fury, eyes bright and burning as he glares at Machiavelli still lying shocked on the bed.

“You fucking _fool_ —after what I did to you?!”

Machiavelli sits up, shaking, but refuses to be cowed. “Think about it for just—”

“I won’t!” Volpe snarls, and Machiavelli’s stomach jolts when he sees the tips of the thief’s fangs peek out beneath his lip. Volpe claps a hand to his mouth and retreats several paces, trembling, and squeezes his eyes shut for several long moments before he lowers his hand again. “No,” he says, voice low and tight. “Never.”

“Fine,” Machiavelli says, lifting his hands in surrender, “fine. That’s fine. I’m only trying to help, Gilberto.”

Volpe is quiet for a moment, rubbing his mouth, eyes downcast and sullen. Machiavelli pours himself a cup of wine from the carafe on the bedside table and sips at it to steady his nerves, and to give his shaking hands something to do.

“Come back to bed,” he entreats, “please?”

There follows a long pause, but then Volpe comes, shuffling back to the bed and letting his lover draw him down upon it. Machiavelli offers him the cup of wine and Volpe takes it, still looking wounded and suspicious.

“The answer is no,” Machiavelli says, speaking very carefully, glad in this moment for all of his experience dealing with volatile lords and princes far more likely than Volpe to take his head off if he offends. “I understand that, and I won’t try to persuade you otherwise. But let me give my reasoning.”

Volpe squints at him. “If you’re not trying to persuade me, why would you want to give your reasoning?”

“Because I want you to understand why I would suggest such a thing, knowing full well how much it would upset you.”

Volpe glowers at him a moment longer, but finally he sighs and shrugs. “Fine. Explain, then, _Messer_ Machiavelli.”

Machiavelli smiles and pours a second cup of wine. “Thank you. My argument is based on three premises.”

“Oh, Christ, here we go.”

“Hush,” Machiavelli chides, fond. “Premise the first. You have to feed to survive, and you detest the act.”

“Sound enough.” Volpe gave an imperious sweep of his hand. “Go on.”

“By ‘the act,’ I mean the killing of your victim,” Machiavelli adds, and Volpe frowns. “The feeding itself I think you find—pleasurable.” Volpe stiffens, and he goes on in a hurry, “I mean the way it is pleasurable to enjoy a hot meal after a long day, or dare I say a glass of wine in bed with a lover. Pleasurable in a creaturely way.”

The hard line of Volpe’s shoulders relaxes a fraction, and after several long moments—which Machiavelli endures with bated breath—he nods.

“Alright,” Machiavelli continues, relieved, holding up two fingers. “Premise two. You kill your victims because, surely, it is unsafe for you if they survive—indeed, unsafe for all of us.”

“Unsafe for all of us, you say.”

“I think it is. For all their posturing in church, you know as well as I that our fellow Tuscans are a superstitious bunch. Every so often we hear about some poor girl in the country who has been burned as a witch. Imagine the chaos if our kinsman thought there was some other dark creature hunting them in the night.”

Volpe snorts as he swirls his wine. “Is that your third premise, then? That I am some dark creature?”

“No,” Machiavelli says gently, and touches him, brushing his knuckles along Volpe’s cheek. “The third is that I love you, and want to help you however I can.”

Volpe frowns at him. “What you are suggesting is well beyond any reasonable measure of devotion.”

“I am given to believe that love _is_ the thing beyond reasonable measures of devotion.” Machiavelli catches Volpe’s hand in his and brings the thief’s scarred knuckles to his mouth. “I have a fourth premise, if you are willing to hear it.”

“I suppose what I have heard so far is not outrageously objectionable.”

Machiavelli smiles, turns Volpe’s hand over in his to nuzzle the older man’s palm. “The fourth,” he says, lowly, “is that I think I want you to.”

Volpe goes still at that, staring at him. “You jest, surely,” he says, a bit weakly. “Why would you ever want that?”

Machiavelli considers for a moment, then indicates the cup of wine in Volpe’s other hand. “Take a drink. Don’t swallow.” Volpe arches a brow but obeys, and Machiavelli beckons him with a crook of his finger. “Now kiss me.”

Volpe’s expression softens, and he tugs Machiavelli close with a hand around his nape. The press of their mouths is wet, bitter, and Volpe’s tongue caressing his around the taste of the wine makes Machiavelli’s head spin. They break apart wetly, breathing hard, wine running down their chins, and Volpe groans as he leans forward to clean the mess on Machiavelli’s face with his tongue.

“See?” Machiavelli breathes, grinning as Volpe draws back to look up at him. “That which is pleasurable in a creaturely way can become pleasurable in the sensual way.”

Volpe considers him with a furrowed brow, but there is no mistaking the lust in his gaze, something dark and curious. “You must be a terror in court,” he says at length, and Machiavelli laughs. “To be clear. You want me to feed on your instead others. And you want me to do it in bed.”

“I want you safe,” Machiavelli corrects him, and pushes Volpe back against the headboard to climb into his lap, curling his fingers into the thief’s gloriously dark hair. Volpe’s hands encircle his waist, and he pulls Machiavelli close, runs his tongue along the ridge of his collarbone where his open shirt leaves it exposed. Volpe bites down, very gently, and Machiavelli shudders. He puts his hands around Volpe’s jaw and tilts the thief’s face up. “I can think of no place safer in this world than our bed.”

Volpe gazes up at him, his expression unreadable, and after a long moment’s quiet contemplation he pulls Machiavelli close, biting the younger man’s lower lip before kissing him firmly. “I’ll think on it,” Volpe says, and then his hands are quick and sure beneath his lover’s shirt, teasing skin that warms at his touch.

Later, as they make love, Volpe scrapes his teeth along Machiavelli’s neck—though not on the side that is scarred.

iii.

“What am I?” Volpe had asked, in dark jest, but for the month that follows, Machiavelli becomes obsessed with the question. He procures as many books as he can on the subject—which, unsurprisingly, are few, difficult to come by, and mostly banned by the church—and to his colleagues, it must seem as though he’s gone a little mad, poring over an old beastiary at his desk and muttering to himself in undertones as he fails, again and again, to find what he’s looking for.

“That must be interesting reading,” Leonardo remarks one afternoon, and Machiavelli looks up from his book to find the artist watching him with a bright, unsuspecting smile. “Though a little outside your usual fare, if I am not mistaken?”

“You aren’t,” Machiavelli says, a touch reluctantly, and starts to go back to his page, a little irritated at being interrupted—and then he pauses. “Leonardo, don’t you have some passing interest in the occult?”

“Passing interest?” Leonardo huffs, and crosses his arms over his chest. The weather is unseasonably warm, and they’ve thrown the windows of his studio open wide to admit a breeze, which scatters papers about as they talk, but Leonardo pays the new mess no heed as he goes back to tinkering with the wooden frame of the new iteration of his flying machine. “I’ll have you know I am a fairly accomplished alchemist. Take your boots off my table, Niccolò.”

Machiavelli lowers his feet and pulls his chair in, propping his elbows against the table as he watches Leonardo make some adjustments to the wing of his contraption. “What do you know about occult creatures?”

“Creatures?” Leonardo frowns as the wing creaks, and he climbs up on a stepstool to inspect the offending joint. “Demons, you mean?”

Machiavelli hesitates. It is hard to picture Gilberto as a demon of any sort, though perhaps the men he’s killed feel differently from their new seats in hell. He shrugs. “Are there variants of demon that are said to drink blood?”

“Blood?” Leonardo turns to him, frowning as he wipes grease from his hands and climbs down from the stool. “Human blood, you mean?” Machiavelli nods, and Leonardo hums, bracing his hands on his hips. “There are many legends, from all over the world. My mother used to scare me with stories about shroud-eaters.”

Machiavelli lifts a brow. “Shroud-eaters?”

Leonardo takes a seat at the table and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Graverobbers find corpses with the shrouds torn at the mouth and the teeth exposed. I hear that in Venezia, they sometimes bury people with bricks in their mouths, to keep them eating their shroud after they reanimate in their graves.”

Machiavelli blinks. “What’s that got to do with blood-drinkers?”

“I suppose it follows a sort of superstitious logic that anything that eats its own shroud after death would also have at least a passing interest in drinking human blood.” Leonardo shrugs. “The truth, of course, is that as a body decays, the foulness of escaping death rots the shroud around the mouth, but I suppose that explanation is not quite as captivating for the public imagination.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leonardo says brightly, and Machiavelli sighs. “Entities that feed on human blood and flesh have long captivated man’s imagination. Sekhmet, daughter of Ra, was thwarted by her lust for blood. And the Babylonian demon Lilitu, later Lilit to the Hebrews—Lilith to good Christians—supposedly ate the flesh and drank the blood of women and their newborns.” Leonardo pauses, frowns. “Although I suppose she usually strangles her victims…” Machiavelli picks up his book again, losing interest, but then Leonardo says, “Ah. There are the alukah, I suppose.”

Machiavelli lifts his head, blinks. “Alukah?”

Leonardo nods, rubbing his chin. “Flying shape-changers who require human blood to survive. A very, very old legend among a group of Jews—the Chasids, I believe? Literally a throwback to their time in Babylonia—it’s really quite fascinating, the degree of cultural mixing that—”

“Leonardo,” Machiavelli interrupts, “I’m sure that’s all terribly interesting, but—surely no one thinks these alukah are… _real_. It’s absurd.”

“Christians believe that Christ really did walk on water, and that he really did turn water to wine,” Leonardo points out. “Is the story of the alukah so much more preposterous?”

Machiavelli ponders that for a moment. “Now that you mention it, the whole water into wine bit seems a little like—”

“Alchemy, yes?” Leonardo finishes, and his grin is wide and gleaming. “Man, gods, demons—perhaps all of these things are closer than we think.”

Machiavelli swallows, unconsciously rubs the scars on his throat. Yes, they are—closer, even, than Leonardo can begin to imagine.

* * *

Volpe is not undead—of that, Machiavelli is sure. He doesn’t precisely know what qualifies someone as ‘undead,’ but Volpe eats, sleeps, fucks, and shits, and if a man can be undead and do all that, well, Machiavelli may be undead himself. There is nothing about Volpe that smells of death—if anything, he is more alive than any other man Machiavelli has ever met, all warm skin and warm breath, so rapacious in his hunger for the things that make life worth living. So responsive, Machiavelli thinks, to touch, as he runs his hands down Volpe’s lithe body and the thief moans for him and twists eager fingers into Machiavelli’s hair. Machiavelli has seen corpses, touched them, made them, and they do not feel like this. Nothing else in the world feels like this. In the end, Machiavelli supposes, it doesn’t really matter what Volpe _is_ , what mythos might explain his curious condition. Be he alukah or draugur or strige, he still feels the same under Machiavelli’s hands, and Machiavelli still loves him.

But the revelation of his condition has brought out something new in Volpe, something Machiavelli has never seen in the man—shame. He has never known Volpe to be ashamed of _anything_ —not of his status, the circumstances of his birth, not of his profession or his trade or his skills, not of his sexual proclivities and desires (hell, those least of all—he once asked Machiavelli to piss on him for sexual gratification and did it with a grin). But when Machiavelli brings up The Condition—as has become its ominous code—Volpe’s eyes slide away and his cheeks flush all the way to his ears.

“You don’t have to be ashamed,” Machiavelli murmurs at him in bed one night, curled against the thief’s back as they relax in the lazy afterglow of good sex. Volpe stiffens and Machiavelli presses his mouth to the older man’s shoulder.

“Should I be proud, then?”

“Pride, shame—does either help? You can’t change what you are.”

There is a long pause—and then Volpe abruptly turns over, seizes Machiavelli’s wrists, and pins him down on his back. Machiavelli’s breath catches as he looks up at the other man, feels his whole overwrought body ache with interest as Volpe straddles his hips.

“I can hear it,” Volpe breathes, and his hands tighten around Machiavelli’s wrists. “Your heartbeat. I can hear it from here. I can smell your blood, hear it moving in your veins.” He tilts his head, and his smile is a bitter, miserable thing. “How can you not be afraid of me, Niccolò?”

“I am,” Machiavelli confesses in a whisper. “Just not for the reasons you think. It’s not what you did to my throat that frightens me, Gilberto, it’s the things you do to my damn heart.”

Volpe gazes at him a moment longer, his eyes wide, lovely—and then he leans down for a kiss that turns hungry in seconds, almost brutal, open-mouthed and panting, before he kisses his way down Machiavelli’s chin, his jaw, nuzzles into the hollow of Machiavelli’s throat and opens his mouth against warm skin.

“ _Tesoro_ ,” he says hoarsely, and trails his tongue along Machiavelli’s pulse, which is so fast Machiavelli marvels that it hasn’t torn his skin. There is a moment pulled free from time, suspended, and then Machiavelli feels the cool slide of fangs extending along his throat, the sensation electric, searing, and he moans, breathless, as Volpe’s grip tightens on his wrists—

And then, all at once, Volpe climbs off him, looking as shaken and afraid as Machiavelli has ever seen him. Machiavelli sits up, reaches for him, but the thief is shaking his head as he strides around the room, collecting his clothes.

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t,” Machiavelli snaps, and curls his hands into fists upon the coverlet. “Don’t, Gilberto. We’ve never apologized for wanting one another before, why should we start now?”

 _“This is not like before!”_ Volpe rounds on him, yelling, and Machiavelli flinches back from him, from the sudden intensity of his anger. “It’s not _natural_ to want you like this!”

“Like how?” Machiavelli demands.

Volpe lunges at him, turns him over onto his front and pins him down with a furious hand in his hair, and Machiavelli doesn’t resist. “Like _this_ ,” Volpe snarls in his ear, forcing Machiavelli’s ass up with a hard hand around his hips, and those fangs are extended and grazing the back of his neck. “Like an animal in heat. Helpless. Bleeding for me while I fuck you.”

Those words are hot knives in the base of his spine, and Machiavelli is pressing his ass back into Volpe’s hips with a moan before he can stop himself, his breath a fluttering, desperate thing in his chest. “Please,” he mumbles, and Volpe’s cock is hot and hard pressed against him. “ _Please_ —”

But la Volpe is already climbing off the bed, tucking himself back into his hose, and Machiavelli lies still on the bed, doesn’t dare lift his head for fear that the thief will see the hot tears in his eyes. Volpe touches him, strokes a hand over his hair, and Machiavelli jerks his head away. There is a pause, and then—

“You frighten me too, Niccolò,” Volpe says lowly. There are light footsteps, the clattering of the window, and he steals out into the night.

* * *

Machiavelli buries himself in work. It is all he can think to do. He sees Volpe three days after their—argument? fight? it wasn’t quite either—and the thief softly requests a little space, a little time. It kills him to do so, but Machiavelli gives him both. He sees Volpe in passing, usually around Ezio and Leonardo, but they don’t go to bed together, don’t kiss, don’t so much as touch. Whatever shook loose in Volpe that night is haunting him.

So. Work. The small matter of governance. The one blessing that came of Volpe’s long absence was that Machiavelli had no distractions from his work, which he increasingly considers as his craft, as much as the blade is Ezio’s and sneak-thievery is Volpe’s. Politics is just a different sort of art, but it requires no less steady a hand than painting or sculpture. It is also, he is learning quickly, something of a science, in that observation and experimentation yield better results than cerebral theorizing. Signori come to him with questions, and Machiavelli no longer refers them to Cicero and Livy, because often, the answers they seek live inside his own head—he saw this and that in Pisa, this or that in Lucca, and once he realizes that the formulas are all quite the same, finding solutions is easy. He’s generated a near-encyclopedic knowledge of political affairs in the Tuscan states without realizing it. 

But there are states beyond Tuscany; Italy, after all, is a tapestry of kingdoms and duchies and territories all mutually disinclined to bend the knee to anyone, let alone one another. He’ll need to understand them, as well. So when it becomes clear that the time Volpe needs will be extended indeed, Machiavelli wheedles his way into a brief ambassadorial mission to Venezia.

“Are you’re sure you’re alright?” Ezio asks, for the hundredth time, as he walks Machiavelli to the city gates.

Machiavelli sighs, pauses them for a moment to adjust Minerva’s saddle bags. She whinnies and snuffles at his hair. “Yes, Ezio. Relax. When do you leave for Spain?”

“Soon. Perhaps before you come home.”

“Make sure the city is well attended in our absence.”

“ _Ma certo,_ Niccolò,” Ezio replies, sounding annoyed, and Machiavelli smiles. “Is Volpe really not travelling with you?”

Machiavelli tries not to let his surprise show, is not sure how well he succeeds. “Why would he? This is a Signoria matter, nothing to do with the brotherhood.”

“He went with you to Forlì.”

“Because he couldn’t resist the temptation of picking Caterina Sforza’s pockets.”

“Well, Venezia has the Doge’s palace.”

“Volpe does as Volpe wants,” Machiavelli says shortly, and mercifully, Ezio lets that be the end of it. Machiavelli mounts his mare outside the gate and turns her toward the road with a click of his tongue before reaching down to grasp the arm Ezio offers him. “Don’t get yourself killed. Say hello to our Spanish brothers for me.”

“I’ll tell them _Messer_ Machiavelli sends his sincerest well wishes, and that should they have need of Florentine aid, they should call upon him.”

Machiavelli grins down at him, all teeth. “See? You’re learning.”

“From the best,” Ezio tells him, and gives Minerva a slap to the rear. Machiavelli gives her his heels, and her hooves are thunder in his ears as she lifts them one after the other, carrying him off into the Tuscan countryside, while Florence grows smaller and smaller at his back.

He takes his time heading to Venezia, wanders a little on the road, visiting the small towns and hamlets that dot the path, listening, collecting information. He learns which local lords have incurred the displeasure of their populaces, and which enjoy the support of citizens with green crops and food in their bellies. He makes careful notes, develops a few new ciphers for the detailed letters he’ll have to send back to the Signoria. All the time he has spent with Leonardo poring over Codex pages is handy in more ways than one, and before long he is making codes for fun, knowing very well he’ll never use most of them.

Venezia, when he finds her at last, is in the full flush of summer, and the canals actually steam in the heat. He stands over one while Minerva refreshes herself, gazing at his reflection. He looks older than he did the last time he visited the floating city, to meet Ezio for the first time and assemble their brotherhood at long last. It was only five years ago, he realizes. It feels like decades. So much has changed.

Venezia, however, has not. The citizens are preparing for a festival of some sort, and the air is full of delicious wafting smells and raucous laughter. Machiavelli stables Minerva and gives a boy a few ducats to take his things to the tiny villa he’s renting for his stay. He has a colleague, a wizened old man named Federico, who will join him in a few days and has been appointed spacious quarters in the Doge’s own palace. Ah, well. Such is the plight of junior ambassadorial staff. Federico will not get to enjoy the festival with the citizens, and Machiavelli suspects that will be his loss.

Technically speaking, he completes his mission in four days. Officially, the job is to soothe the Doge’s ruffled feathers over a spat of border disputes initiated by some foolhardy condotierri in Florentine employ. Unofficially, it is to identify the Doge’s personal creditor and convince him to sell the Doge’s debt to someone who will doubtlessly later find himself further seduced with Florentine favors. Machiavelli sniffs out the creditor with a few florins placed in the right pockets, and is a little disappointed by how easy it is. It’s not much of a game, and that leaves him with two weeks to idle about Venezia while _Messer_ Federico makes pointless inroads in the Doge’s court.

“Find a girl to distract you, then,” Federico snaps, when for the third time in a day Machiavelli complains of boredom. “And be grateful you do not have to spend your time sweating in that palace. Venezia is lovely—sample her, why don’t you?”

He has sampled all he cares to of Venezia. This is Machiavelli’s permanent problem—when he is home, he feels irrepressible wanderlust, and when he is away, he feels miserably homesick. It’s a cyclic torture from which he only finds reprieve when he is with Volpe, whose hands and mouth feel like home no matter where they find themselves.

He misses the fool, so Machiavelli writes him a letter—and then a second, and a third, and though he receives no reply, he writes one a day, sometimes two. It’s been a month since Volpe fed on the corrupt guard; no doubt he’s growing hungry, and Machiavelli worries that Volpe won’t do what he needs to do.

In his tenth letter, he extends an invitation. If Volpe still needs time, fine, if he wants space, fine—but can’t they at least be in the same city? Machiavelli feels a little petulant, scurrying away to Venezia only to turn around and ask Volpe to come join him because he feels lonely, but he can’t help himself. It feels like the thread that keeps them tied together is fraying, readying itself to snap, and he can’t bear to think of how it would feel to lose Volpe for real—again.

He does not, however, expect Volpe to take him up on it, and so it is the shock of all shocks when he hears a tapping at his window one night and looks up from his book to see Volpe crouched on the sill. The thief smiles at him, waves, and Machiavelli almost falls over himself in his haste to cross the room and pull the window open.

“Gilberto—” he says, breathless, and then Volpe’s arms are around him, holding him close, holding him like a lover again, and he nearly weeps his relief as he puts his arms around Volpe’s neck and lets the thief carry him to the bed.

“You’re right,” Volpe says, before he can get another word in, and begins to undress him with deft hands. “It is hell to have your lover run away from you. I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t trying to run away from you.”

“Yes,” Volpe says simply, pulling away his shirt, “you were. And I forgive you.” He leans down then, presses hot kisses to the side of Machiavelli’s neck, and when he speaks again it is in low tones. “Niccolò—I’m hungry.”

“I have a little bread and salami down—” But then Volpe’s tongue traces his pulse, and Machiavelli’s heart threatens to quit entirely. “Oh,” he says, weakly, and tangles his hands in Volpe’s hair, gasps as he feels his lover’s teeth—the regular ones—graze his skin.

Volpe lifts his head, sweeps his tongue across his lips. “Do you still—”

“Yes,” Machiavelli murmurs, tugging on the thief’s head, loses his breath when Volpe leans down into him, when their cocks press together through their hose. He presses shaky kisses to every bit of Volpe he can reach, his brow, his cheeks, finally finds his thief’s mouth and hums up into a slick kiss that leaves him winded. “ _Yes_ , Gilberto.”

Volpe looks down at him, his gaze impossibly soft. “I love you,” he whispers, sounds a little choked at the admission, and steals another panting kiss from Machiavelli’s mouth before moving down his lover’s body, lingers for a long time to tease Machiavelli’s nipples into stiff, aching peaks with his tongue and teeth before kissing his way down the younger man’s stomach.

Machiavelli stuffs his knuckles into his mouth to quash a gasp when Volpe nuzzles his erection through his hose, lower back arching as Volpe pushes his thighs apart and snuggles down between them. “I thought—”

“Hush,” Volpe murmurs, busy sucking damp patches into Machiavelli’s hose over his cock, enjoying the tease. “I told you I would have you helpless. There is more than one way to render you so.”

“Is that so?” Machiavelli laughs, breathless. “You’re awfully confi—con—” But he loses the words on a choked-out gasp as Volpe’s mouth slides hot and wet across his cock, goes weak and boneless beneath his lover’s hands, and Volpe chuckles against his skin before trailing his tongue along the flared corona of the younger man’s cock.

“Speechless?” he croons, and Machiavelli glares down at him, only manages to hold it for a moment because then Volpe’s mouth swallows him down and his eyes roll back, hips rolling to get deeper, a desperate, pleading sound leaving his mouth before he can bite it down. It has simply been too long without Volpe in his bed, and Machiavelli has been _aching_ for him, for just this caress, precisely this touch.

Volpe sucks like it’s his job, his violet eyes smiling while his mouth is preoccupied as he looks up through his lashes at his lover. Machiavelli groans, put his hands over his face and tries to find steadiness in his breathing as Volpe swallows around him.

“I can’t—I’m too close—”

Volpe comes up with a wet _pop_ , laughing, stroking Machiavelli’s cock in his hand. “We’ve only just begun.”

“I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“But you’ve come, surely,” Volpe says, and when Machiavelli doesn’t reply, his mouth drops open. “Niccolò!”

“Well! I’ve been busy!”

Volpe’s grin is so wide it must almost ache. “Oh? Or is it that, compared to lying with me, your own hand simply can’t satisfy?”

That’s it exactly, but Machiavelli will die before he admits it out loud, and he turns his head away from Volpe’s smiling eyes with a huff as the thief snickers and continues to play with his cock. Volpe’s hand leaves him for a moment, and Machiavelli hears him fumbling with something in his cloak, and then that palm returns slick and warm around him. Machiavelli judders out a moan, his hips jumping, fucking himself into the loose grip of Volpe’s oil-slick fist while the thief laughs and finishes shucking away their hose.

“Shall I be cruel to you, _tesoro_?” he murmurs, and the words send a hot flush along Machiavelli’s skin. He considers a snide comment about what Volpe plans on doing to his throat, which will not be the usual manner of ravaging, but decides to withhold it. Instead he lets his thighs fall open, and Volpe takes the invitation for what it is and slides his slick finger down to his lover’s hole, massaging the tender skin until Machiavelli groans and gives another roll of his hips.

“I can’t take the teasing, Gilberto.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Volpe replies, without missing a beat, but he presses a finger in and finds Machiavelli’s prostate with the honed ease of an archer sinking an arrow through the bullseye. Machiavelli tries to breathe through it, but one rock of Volpe’s finger is all it takes to have him gasping and pleading, fists coiling in the sheets as another finger presses in, stretching him open. Volpe shuffles closer, tosses Machiavelli’s legs over his elbows and leans down to press a kiss to the younger man’s drawn up knee.

And then he leans down, bending Machiavelli nearly in half, and his mouth brushes soft and warm against Machiavelli’s throat. The assassin freezes, holds his breath as Volpe’s tongue flickers out to taste his pulse, and Volpe huffs a hot breath against his skin.

“Niccolò, I—”

“Shh.” Machiavelli rests his wrists against the bed, and Volpe grasps them, squeezes tight, pinning him. “Shh, Gilberto. It’s alright.”

Volpe kisses the flushed skin beneath his mouth, sucks a bruise there, and then Machiavelli hears the soft sound of his fangs extending. There is another hungry swipe of the thief’s tongue, a low moan from his mouth—and then his fangs sink in. Machiavelli gasps at the pain, flinching, and Volpe’s hands slide up to entangle their fingers. Several seconds pass, and then Machiavelli feels it again, that strange, flooding feeling of heaviness. The tension uncoils from his muscles, and without any of the fear of the last time he felt this way, it’s actually pleasant—delightful, even, to go completely boneless against his lover’s body, to surrender his control and let Volpe ease him into a position that is more comfortable.

Volpe withdraws for a moment, lifts his head to peer down into Machiavelli’s face, his eyes searching, cautious. “Alright?” he breathes, and Machiavelli can only nod, lifts a hand with Herculean will and tangles it in Volpe’s hair, tugging on him. Volpe smiles and goes, sinks his teeth in again, and Machiavelli shudders as he feels the thief stealing the last thing in his lover’s body that isn’t already his.

Volpe’s moan is molten against his skin, low and trembling with satisfaction, and the thief rolls his hips. The swollen head of his cock brushes between Machiavelli’s legs, and the younger man tries and fails to rise up to meet it. Volpe gathers himself enough to grip his length and ease it home, sinks into his lover with a shaking gasp before returning his mouth to the wound and licking up the welling blood. He smears a bloody kiss across Machiavelli’s jaw, pants against the underside of his chin as they couple in slow, jerky thrusts.

The experience is—transcendent. Machiavelli can’t think of a better word for it. The pain in his neck is clean and sharp, exquisite almost, and the heaviness in his limbs is accented by a tingling that makes every touch feel like a hundred. The kiss Volpe presses to his mouth taste of blood, but moreover they’re ambrosial, and Machiavelli moans into him with abandon. Volpe murmurs his name, over and over, and presses their foreheads together as the rocking of his hips becomes more urgent, faster, harder. He plants his hands on the back of Machiavelli’s thighs and pushes his knees toward his chest, and the resultant angle is impossibly deep, leaves Machiavelli fighting for every strangled breath as Volpe fucks him.

Volpe ducks his head and bites him again, sinks his fangs into the tender spot just above Machiavelli’s collarbone and hangs on, a low growl in his throat. It is dark and animal and wanton, the thing that feeding brings out in him, and Machiavelli wants _more_ of it, impossibly, more of whatever la Volpe has to give him.

“Harder,” he gasps, “harder, Gilberto, please—like before—”

Volpe kisses him then, a long, hard kiss, like a promise or a fervent prayer, and then flips him over. His hands are gentle for a moment, trailing up Machiavelli’s legs, over his ass, up his back, caressing his shoulders—and then one grips his jaw and the other his hair, forcing his head up, and Volpe bites his into his throat and pushes into him again. Machiavelli scrabbles for purchase, manages to get his elbows braced against the mattress before Volpe thrusts against him, and the headboard bangs against the wall. The next thrust pitches him forward, pushes him up the bed, and he finds his face and hands pressed flat to the headboard while Volpe growls and pounds against his ass.

“Niccolò,” Volpe snarls, pants open-mouthed against the younger man’s shoulder. “Niccolò. _Niccolò_.”

Machiavelli begs—doesn’t even know what he begs for, just pleads with Volpe or with God or with whoever else will listen as the man he loves takes him apart and consumes the pieces. He loses time—it could be mere minutes that Volpe takes him, it could be hours, but however long it takes Volpe eventually comes with a choked moan, nails scoring lines in Machiavelli’s back, fangs sunk deep into his shoulder. But his hips don’t stop, Volpe _keeps fucking him_ , his own come slicking the way, and the pressure against his prostate peaks, crests, and Machiavelli topples over with a broken gasp, his pleading giving ways to soft sobs as he spills across the bed, grinding his cock to completion against the coverlet.

He also doesn’t know how long he lies there in the aftermath, shuddering, floating outside of his own body. The next sensation of which is he aware is that of Volpe’s tongue on the side of his neck, lapping softly at his wounds. The thief catches his gaze and grasps Machiavelli’s chin, angles the younger man’s head to look at him.

“Say something,” he murmurs, voice low and tight, full of something that, if it is not fear, is very close to it.

Machiavelli manages a smile, a weak thing, trembling. “I am glad,” he croaks out, “that I wasn’t given quarters in the Doge’s palace.”

Volpe blinks—and then his lips widens in a smile, stretching around his fangs, and he bends down to press hungry kisses to Machiavelli’s mouth, like he plans to consume his lover’s breath next.

iv.

“ _Tesoro_ ,” Volpe says, a month later, his voice pitched in a whine, “I’m _hungry_.”

Without looking up from his book, Machiavelli rolls up his sleeve and offers his wrist. There is a moment of surprised silence before Volpe bursts into laughter.

“I meant hungry in the traditional sense.”

“Oh.” Machiavelli moves to take his wrist back, but Volpe catches it and runs his tongue along the vein, waggling an eyebrow.

“Not that I would object overmuch, if you’re feeling generous—”

“Once a week,” Machiavelli reminds him, chiding. “Once a week, that’s what we agreed on. You want it to be now?”

Volpe pouts and drops his arm. “No.”

Machiavelli grins and pinches his cheek. “That’s what I thought.”

The thief bats him away, half-hearted, and smiles as he returns to perusing the stack of letters that Machiavelli wrote him during his half-year long absence. “These are terribly romantic, you know. No wonder you never attempted to get them to me.”

“I didn’t try because I had no idea where you were.” And because they’re really _terribly_ romantic—and not half bad, if he says so himself, and he does. It has never occurred to him to try his hand at romance writing, but, well, there is a lot about his life now that would have seemed impossible even a month ago. Perhaps it’s a good time to try.

Volpe gets to his feet and crosses Machiavelli’s office to throw the windows open wide and admit the night breeze. The wicked heat of summer is finally loosening its grip on the Tuscan countryside, and something like a chill is in the air. Volpe is smiling, hood down, letting the breeze play through his hair, and Machiavelli’s love for the handsome fool is a desperate ache in his chest, a web ensnaring his limbs. He gets up from his desk and joins Volpe at the window, slips his arms around the older man’s waist and hugs him tightly from behind. Volpe looks back at him in surprise.

“Overcome by affection, were you?”

“Yes,” Machiavelli mumbles, and then, “Shut up,” as he leans up on his toes to bite the side of Volpe’s neck, and the thief laughs, loud and easy, more brightly than Machiavelli has heard from him in a long time.

“I’m touched.” He turns in Machiavelli’s arms, ignoring his protests, and scoops his face up for a slow kiss laden with far too much intent for where they are and for how thoroughly they’re still dressed. But Machiavelli leans up into it, tangles his hands in Volpe’s dark hair, humming an eager sound against the thief’s mouth as Volpe backs him toward the desk.

“On second thought,” Volpe murmurs, fingertips trailing along the side of Machiavelli’s neck, caressing his months-old scars, which are now little more than white lines barely visible to the eye. “Meet me on the roof?”

“Knew it,” Machiavelli snorts. “Go on. Give me a minute to finish here.”

Volpe grins, kisses him again, and Machiavelli pushes him off with a smile. The thief darts out the window, swift and dark as a shade, and Machiavelli stares after him a moment. Then he sorts the papers on his desk, putting aside the documents the notaries cocked up earlier in the day. He pauses when he finds a sealed letter, one he wrote weeks ago—a request to his assassin brothers in Jerusalem for any information they can share about alukah. He picks up the letter, turning it over in his hands, and after a moment’s deliberation, tosses it into the fire. He watches it smolder to embers before donning his coat and climbing out the window. Overhead, the last full moon of the summer is luminous and golden, its light taking a great hungry bite out of the dark shroud of the night sky.


End file.
